Equity and Justice are the sure ways to see India’s 10.1 million children get back to school, continue studying, and allow the next generation to do the same.
Saji P Mathew OFM
The stories of child labourers are not untold stories, they are unheeded stories. They have been told, we have heard of them, we have seen them, but have not paid heed to them. Governments and institutions have conveniently ignored the evidence. Inside of homes, factories, in mines, and out in the fields India exploits and maltreats, as of 2011 figures, 10.1 million child labourers; of which 5.6 million are boys and 4.5 million are girls. A total of 152 million children - 64 million girls and 88 million boys - are estimated to be in child labour globally, accounting for almost one in ten of all children worldwide. They have no voice, no rights, and no privileges. They are too young to vote but old enough to toil for 14-18 hours a day, sometimes even without sufficient food and other basic necessities. We see it but stand by passively. The adults have reasons, and make it sound so normal.
Two wrongs don't make a right. People connect children working to lack of means to live and poverty. Adults and families at times claim that unless these kids work they would die in poverty. Grace Abbott, an American social worker who specifically worked in improving the rights of immigrants and child labourers, categorically says, "Child labour and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labour of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labour to the end of time.”
What is child labour?
The International Labor Organization (ILO), a subsidiary of the United Nations, defines child labor as “work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential, and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.” Child labour comes in many shapes and forms: slave labour, forced labour, bonded labour, or even casual labour; the result is the same –it steals the children of their childhood, potential, and dignity.
Child labour is the result of many factors, including poverty, social norms condoning them, lack of decent work opportunities for adults, migration, wars and conflicts. Across India child labourers are found in a variety of industries: in brick kilns, carpet weaving, garment making, domestic service, food and refreshment services, agriculture, fisheries and mining. They provide cheap or unpaid labour. It has severe negative short and long-term consequences for children, such as denial of education and undermining physical and mental health. Child labourers face all forms of abuse - physical, mental, sexual and emotional.
Child labour is preventable
Looking at the numbers, the nexus in which child labour happens, and economic and social situation that perpetuate child labour, it would seem an impossible task to put an end to it; but it is doable if we take them, the children, as priority over cheap income and massive profit. Thus, as in the case of caste atrocities, gender bias, etc., a change initiated by the beneficiaries is next to impossible.
Listening to children is vital in achieving success in the fight against child labour, says the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Children have a right to voice their views on matters affecting them; and they often do it to parents and teachers but we ignore them because their voices are not loud enough and they are too tiny to pose a threat. Teachers and others in the education system can be frontline supporters to protect children and can alert others such as social workers to situations where children display signs od forced labour.
Informed buying can challenge child labour
Many products, from computer appliances, gold products to tea, chocolates, and seafood, which we proudly consume, have the fingerprints of child labourers mostly from developing countries or even from a developed country. 15 percent of gold that we consume comes from the small mines, which are traditional and non-mechanised, in Indonesia and in other parts of the world; and most of it is mined by tiny hands and tiny bodies that are actually only big enough to hold just pencils and chocolates. It is true of many products.
The decisions of what you buy have the potential to challenge child labour. Boycott products that are made by forced child labour. Some products we can easily identify, but others, produced and distributed by global corporations, with so complex network and supply chains, may not be easy. But we can demand information. If information is not given, write to them as unsatisfied customers, create bad press, and make them accountable. In this era of the Internet and social media they can’t afford the risk of bad press. Successful boycotting will put pressure on the producers to check and assure that the products they sell are not made by child labourers.
It is a bit of work; but if we care, we have no many options. Let us not look good and impressive at the expense of helpless children’s lives. If we can help they will no more be helpless.
Equity and justice is the lasting solution
Getting children out of work and into school requires broader changes in public policy to empower families to choose education over exploitative labour. Often families living in abject poverty can’t see the damage they are doing to the children and their future. Therefore those in power must empower them with actions of equity and justice.
Equality may be a big word but often it is not enough. Given the socio economic situation, equality may not solve the problem of child labour. Just giving all children equal opportunity is not enough; they must be given equal opportunities of arriving at success, for their starting points are so varied. Considering the backwardness of these children, they must be given more than mere equality at the starting point, because others are far ahead in many other aspects like opportunities, intellectual and social acumen, etc. These children and families caught up in the rut of child labour should be given big enough incentives to push them out of it and begin to enjoy the benefits of education and a quality life. Or even if children are freed from child labour and put on record it would be only matter of time that they would have returned to fields, shops, factories, and mines to be exploited and maltreated. As it often happens, we would finally have only the records of rescued children but the children are back to the rat hole of child labour.
For a lasting effect we must fix the system and make it more just. If equity is treating everyone according to his or her circumstances, justice is long-term equity. It brings about sustainable change and progress. Equity and Justice are the sure ways to see India’s 10.1 million children get back to school, continue studying, and allow the next generation to do the same.
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